DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SMART VERTICAL GARDEN SYSTEM FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE INITIATIVE IN MALAYSIA

Vertical garden system has the potential to increase vegetable production in the urban areas in Malaysia. This research designed and developed a compact and smart vertical garden system for the urban agriculture. It also analysed the growth performances of lettuce in the smart vertical garden system which involved two phases; the development of vertical garden system and the monitoring system for nutrient solution. The growth performances of different stacks of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) in the vertical garden system were observed and compared against the commercialised conventional hydroponic system. The growth performances of lettuce in the vertical garden system showed that the most bottom stack (stack 5) of lettuce achieved the maximum level of lettuce height, and had the highest number of leaves and leaves width. Nevertheless, from the overall ANOVA results, at different levels of the stacks of lettuce, only lettuce height was observed as having a significant difference (P < 0.0001) while no significant difference was found in the number of leaves (P = 0.0002) and leaves width (P = 0.0046). The growth development varied due to different amounts of water and light exposure. On the other hand, no significant difference was found when comparing between the vertical garden system and the commercialised conventional hydroponic system (lettuce height, P = 0.4997; number of leaves, P = 0.5325; and leaves width, P = 0.5231). In short, the smart vertical garden system can give the same performance as the commercial conventional hydroponic system.